Spitting On The Famous Because They Decide For Themselves When They'll Open The Blinds
I wrote about privacy in a column:

Though the private details of our lives -- our thoughts, emotions, and closed-door doings -- aren't things you can hold, they are our possessions just like the physical objects we own. In an 1890 Harvard Law Review article, Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren explain that privacy is a natural human right that comes out of our right to be left alone.

Famous people don't have the same right to privacy as ordinary nobodies, because they are public figures. The economic model of tabloids is based on this unfortunate fact for the famous.

Quillette's @clairelemon tweeted something related to this -- critical of an article on Spiked -- and I agree with her.

I like Spiked a lot. But Brendan O'Neill missed on this one, headlined, "Do we really need to know about Meghan Markle's miscarriage? Harry and Meghan are now invading their own privacy."

It is very sad that Meghan Markle suffered a miscarriage. It is always sad when a happily expectant mother loses her baby. It is also strange, however, that Markle has chosen to write about the miscarriage in such emotionally revealing detail in the pages of the New York Times. I thought Markle, and Prince Harry, wanted privacy? To be left alone by the voyeuristic media? And yet here is Markle inviting not only New York Times readers but also people across the world to observe one of the most intimate moments of her life. She's inviting us right into her hospital room, in fact, where, she tells us, there were 'cold white walls' and Harry's hand was 'clammy' as they both wept for their loss. I have never felt more like an intruder into Harry and Meghan's life than I did reading Meghan's piece.

There is an undeniable contradiction at play here. Even those praising Markle as 'brave' for writing a mini-essay about a miscarriage - the word 'brave' is far too promiscuously used these days - must admit that we live under an extraordinary double standard in relation to voyeurism. When a tabloid newspaper publishes a surreptitiously taken photo of Meghan and her son taking a walk, that's an intolerable invasion of the duchess's privacy. When the Mail on Sunday publishes a letter that Meghan wrote to her father, and which her father freely gave to the Mail, that's an act of grotesque voyeurism. 'Why do a lowly rag and its lowly readers insist on peering into the intimacies of Meghan's life?', people ask. Yet when Markle herself opens the door to her innermost emotions and welcomes a vast global audience to observe her pain, that isn't facilitating voyeurism, apparently. No, it's brave; it's 'raising awareness'.

...But knowing the precise circumstances in which Markle suffered her miscarriage? Knowing what her son Archie was doing at the time? Knowing about what she and Harry felt and did in that cold, white hospital room? I don't want this information. It feels wrong. Markle has just exposed far more about her internal life than her father or any tabloid newspaper has ever done.

...Are we really invading Meghan Markle's life, or is she invading ours?

Let's assume O'Neill wasn't reading the piece while Markle held him at gunpoint (and thus had to keep reading it).

I don't like seeing MMA fights, photos of wounded animals, or the plate mush that passes for food in the UK. However, instead of writing pieces about any of these things for Spiked, I simply turn the page -- or do the digital form of that.

I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" that a way to have meaning in your life is to extend yourself for others -- maybe help them with a personal story you tell.

And I wrote in, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence," per the work of James Pennebaker, that "expressive writing," writing about upsetting experiences, is likewise a way to make meaning out of them. This helps people go forward rather than ruminating.

Markle and her husband made a decision on which blinds they'd open for the rest of us.

Brendan...calm down!